First Published in 1996. This collection of works is in response to American film scholar and long-term resident of Japan, Donald Richie, words:' The Japanese failure to come to terms with Hiroshima is one which is shared by everybody in the world today,' from over thirty years ago, when responding to the Japanese subgenre of cinema which had dealt with the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three decades on, the question lingers, does this appraisal remain valid? Hibakusha Cinema is an attempt - perhaps momentarily - to reorient critical focus upon a rarely discussed, yet important feature of Japanese cinema. The essays collected here represent a mix of Japanese and western (pan-Pacific) scholarship harnessing multidisciplinary methodologies, ranging from close textual analysis, archival and historical argument, anthropological assessment, literary and film comparative analyses to psychological and ideological hermeneutics.

Mick Broderick is author of Nuclear Movies (1991), is completing a PhD in apocalyptic narrative and currently works for the Australian Film Commission in Sydney, Australia. He has published widely on nuclear themes in film, and was invited by Physicians for Social Responsibility to co-curate The Atomic Age in Film Series, a retrospective of nuclear cinema screened in Los Angeles throughout 1995.

Introduction, Broderick Mick; Chapter 1 'Mono no aware': Hiroshima in Film, Richie Donald; Chapter 2 The Imagination of Disaster, Sontag Susan; Chapter 3 Godzilla and the Japanese Nightmare: When Them! is U.S., Noriega Chon A; Chapter 4 Emperor Tomato-Ketchup: Cartoon Properties From Japan, Crawford Ben; Chapter 5 Akira and the Postnuclear Sublime, Freiberg Freda; Chapter 6 Depiction of the Atomic Bombings in Japanese Cinema During the U.S. Occupation Period, Hirano Kyoko; Chapter 7 The Body at the Center - The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Norms Abé Mark; Chapter 8 The Extremes of Innocence: Kurosawa's Dreams and Rhapsodies, Ehrlich Linda C; Chapter 9 Akira Kurosawa and the Atomic Age, Goodwin James; Chapter 10 Narrative Strategies of Understatement in Black Rain as a Novel and a Film, Dorsey John T., Matsuoka Naomi; Chapter 11 'Death and the Maiden': Female Hibakusha as Cultural Heroines, and the Politics of A-bomb Memory, Todeschini Maya Morioka;